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Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

autoexpress.co.uk

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Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#51

Post by amelius »

tjwebbnorfolk wrote: post #23
amelius wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism does not necessarily act in the interest of consumers, if that is what you were thinking.

If no one buys this car, making more of them will lose money until they stop. If consumers buy the car, then it will live on. In other words, CONSUMERS do not necessarily act in the interest of consumers.

This assumes that consumers have perfect information, that products never change in favor of the vendor (enshittification), limited choice of products, and ignores the power of quasi monopolies. Also ignores persuasion tactics which have great power, see The Internet.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#52

Post by rikafurude21 »

kotaKat wrote: post #33
jaffa2 wrote: post #18

Tesla already does this. Why no kickback there?

The stranger thing here is it's... a whole 27 brake horsepower. I don't even think there's a different part at play at all here, they just decided to figure out how to play with their throttle mappings and stuff and wanted to scrape an extra couple bucks out of the bottom of the barrel. At least Tesla was using some sense of the "ship one battery and restrict it in software" for an actual tangible hardware good versu…

In both cases hardware is throttled by software. Theres is no difference, its all software shenanigans.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#53

Post by Zigurd »

stego-tech wrote: post #31
CoastalCoder wrote: post #8

I recently bought a Honda, and yesterday they emailed me a survey focused on what subscription services I'd find useful at various price points. Unfortunately the survey gave me no opportunity to explain how much the basic concept of them continuing to be up my business post-purchase pisses me off.

Cars already have a recurring “subscription” in the form of fuel, maintenance, repairs, insurance, and cleaning. Unless more companies are pulling a Volvo and offering a comprehensive maintenance subscription that covers all the above via a monthly fee, then they can collectively FOAD. EDIT: I am keenly aware how cars work and don’t need eSplaining on them. I articulate my point better in a comment deeper in the thre…

That's part of the motivation for them to come up with cockamamie subscription ideas: the car companies and the dealers rely on maintenance revenue, which is significantly reduced in EVs. Tire shops are the only ones happy about EVs.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#54

Post by degamad »

slt2021 wrote: post #39
_aavaa_ wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People do understand the economics: tomorrow the subscription costs 3x more, or they chose to stop supporting it when a new model comes out, or etc. The analogy to software is great though; nobody paying for software owns it, or even has the option to own it. This is not fully the case for physical things, and people are rightly angry about “owning” things without owning them.

just multiply the monthly payment by 12*6 (avg time to own a car) and imagine giving the full amount upfront to the dealer for the full horsepower. I dont understand why people balk at car subscription for some feature, but perfectly fine with leasing a car => which is basically a car subscription driven to its logical end? does it matter if you have to pay $700 to your bank for lease and separately $20 to VW for som…

The difference is that the bank can't suddenly decide that you owe them $800 each month instead of $720, but VW can decide that your subscription costs $100 instead of $20.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#55

Post by ceejayoz »

degamad wrote: post #54
slt2021 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just multiply the monthly payment by 12*6 (avg time to own a car) and imagine giving the full amount upfront to the dealer for the full horsepower. I dont understand why people balk at car subscription for some feature, but perfectly fine with leasing a car => which is basically a car subscription driven to its logical end? does it matter if you have to pay $700 to your bank for lease and separately $20 to VW for som…

The difference is that the bank can't suddenly decide that you owe them $800 each month instead of $720, but VW can decide that your subscription costs $100 instead of $20.

And at some point the bank says “You’re done! Loan paid in full!”

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#56

Post by jakub_g »

slt2021 wrote: post #39
_aavaa_ wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People do understand the economics: tomorrow the subscription costs 3x more, or they chose to stop supporting it when a new model comes out, or etc. The analogy to software is great though; nobody paying for software owns it, or even has the option to own it. This is not fully the case for physical things, and people are rightly angry about “owning” things without owning them.

just multiply the monthly payment by 12*6 (avg time to own a car) and imagine giving the full amount upfront to the dealer for the full horsepower. I dont understand why people balk at car subscription for some feature, but perfectly fine with leasing a car => which is basically a car subscription driven to its logical end? does it matter if you have to pay $700 to your bank for lease and separately $20 to VW for som…

To my understanding, most people who do leasing (at least in EU) do it because it's much cheaper due to tax regulations (if you buy a car for the company you own).

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#57

Post by abcd_f »

rvz wrote: post #2

Now you are seeing the great electric car scam - Selling you an under-powered electric car and to increase its power you must pay for a subscription to unlock it's full power capabilities. The best part is, many won't care (when they should). But these days, it is okay to get scammed isn't it? BMW tried selling a subscription on heated seats, but that failed. [0], So lets see how long this will last. [0] https://news…

BMW still sells a subscription to advanced headlight functions, live traffic info in their navigation and few other things. It's just now a packaged deal and they also opt you in by default into a three month trial. The car is also all but unusable without an online account, so there's that.

Regrettably, despite of all the brouhaha with the heated seats, all this b/s never really went away.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#58

Post by m_mueller »

slt2021 wrote: post #46
Hilift wrote: post #29

The US has guaranteed this will become the norm with increased auto tariffs. An auto manufacturer can produce a car with significantly lower value for import to another country, and "features and services" can be enabled later for a fee.

This is called transfer pricing. VW can make cars in the US, but barely make any profit, thus minimizing taxes paid to the US. The subscription payments however can flow freely to the Switzerland directly, where royalty payments are taxed at the lowest possible rate. This is how pharma works: pharma entities in the US dont make any profit, because they send royalty to the IP holder entity in Switzerland, where these…

Why would it flow to Switzerland? I believe VW headquarters are still in Germany.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#59

Post by rkomorn »

Hilift wrote: post #29

The US has guaranteed this will become the norm with increased auto tariffs. An auto manufacturer can produce a car with significantly lower value for import to another country, and "features and services" can be enabled later for a fee.

I don't buy this much at all (without making any kind of opinion statement on tariffs).

They're going to do the same thing in Europe (where the US tariffs don't apply).

Subscription-based features that are already built into the car and only activated by software have been talked about since at least 2020.

Car companies have been leaning on (BS, IMO) software revenue since the days of the $100+ GPS data update sticks, at the latest.

I don't think this is the future any consumer wants, but it's the one we're gonna get from every industry where money can be turned on with the flip of a Boolean.

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